The audience for A Master Class in Style and Punctuation, at the Conde Nast College of Fashion and Design, in Soho, was fantastic. While waiting backstage with Vassili and Anna, I confessed that I still sometimes had that teachers’ nightmare of running out of things to say ten minutes into a fifty-minute class. I covered commas, semicolons, and syntax, and had fresh examples from the Times and the TLS, and even brought my laurel wreath, in case I got desperate. But the many differences between British English and American English bubbled up all over, keeping everyone awake and engaged for the full hour and a half, and I sold lots of books. Thank you!

Great to meet Catharine Morris of the TLS. Enthralling to wander Soho among the hordes of Thursday-night drinkers. My single souvenir of London: a stack of coasters from a pub called the Pillars of Hercules. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Greek Street was full of references to the Greeks.

Heading home now, on the Queen Mary 2. Keeping a lookout for icebergs!